The garden was lovely, with English summer flowers and a manicured lawn as flat as a green on a golf course. A game of croquet had been set up. In one of the distant, expansive lawns was a flock of sheep, which made the place resemble a nineteenth-century painting. It was all terribly bucolic. It was as if the Chinese were playing the lord of the manor.

Berman walked around the house a couple of times and thought about what he might say to Pia and how to couch his argument. He knew it was going to be an uphill struggle, headstrong as she was and as self-righteous as he expected her to be. He could already hear her purported outrage. If the prize wasn’t as important for him, he wouldn’t bother to make the effort. From his perspective it was absolutely critical that she acted volitionally. Berman had never on principle paid for sex nor had he ever, in his mind, forced himself on a woman. His enjoyment depended as much on his partners’ as on his own. What Berman wanted more than the physical rush was the boost to his self-esteem.

After his second circuit of the house, he stood in front, looking down on the village. He could see the village green in the center, with modest, storybook houses dotted around. They looked as if they had been molded from the landscape, as if they had grown rather than been built by human hands. In the middle distance a car was navigating a one-lane village road and kept disappearing behind the hedgerows. Beyond them, rows of golden wheat swayed in pocket-sized fields.

Berman was joined by Jimmy Yan.

“It’s very pretty,” said Jimmy, looking out at the scene.

“It is. And peaceful.”

“Quite so. No one bothers us here; no one asks any questions; everything is quiet. We are careful to keep our traffic to a minimum.”

The two men stood in silence for a moment. Jimmy turned slightly and indicated another large building to the west of where they were standing, almost obscured by a dense copse of trees.

“That is the manor house, built in 1460; a rather chaotic time in British history. We own that as well, but it has not been decided whether to renovate it. It will require a lot of money. It is ironic that we Chinese are here now buying such real estate after all the mischief we endured during the colonialism era. But it is a lovely building, and quite old. Of course, Chinese civilization is the most ancient of all, and I don’t think much was happening in the culture of your country in 1460.”

Actually, there was a lot going on in the North American continent before Columbus discovered the new world, thought Berman, but he didn’t have the energy or inclination to engage in an academic debate with Jimmy Yan.

“So have you decided what to do with the girl?” Yan continued.